The Mom Stop: No price tag on this pooch

Lydia Seabol Avant More Content Now

Tuesday

Aug 21, 2018 at 12:22 PMAug 21, 2018 at 12:22 PM

It was long before I was born, when my parents lived in California in the 1970s that my mom told my dad she thought they should think about getting a dog.As my dad tells it, there wasn’t much “thinking.” The very next day, my mom went to “look” at the pound, only to come home with the most scruffy, dirty, matted cockapoo in Orange County. My dad was speechless when he first saw the dog, and my mom couldn’t stop going on and on about how cute he was. It turns out, after a bath and some serious grooming, the dog fit right in. His name was Charlie. In many ways, Charlie was their first child. He was constantly at my mom’s side. He could tell, just by the type of shoes my mom put on, whether she was going to work or whether there was a chance he was going on a walk. Years later, after a cross-country move back to Alabama and after I was born, my mom says that Charlie would run from my nursery to her any time I cried. He was my guardian. At age 4, when the chain of our swingset got twisted around my body as I played in the backyard, it was Charlie that ran to the house barking, setting the neighborhood on high alert. As my sister and I got older, he endured my sister and me dressing him up in baby clothes, curling his long, floppy ears up in foam curlers. When I did homework, he sat by my feet. When I went to bed, he often followed.He was a great dog, who lived until he was 17.But he almost didn’t. In the first few years that my parents had him, he got quite sick. But my mother was going to do anything she could to save that dog, which required a lengthy stay at the vet, IV fluids and costly medications.My dad still jokingly scoffs at how much they paid in veterinary bills on dear old “Charles.” But it was worth it, in the end. I’ve thought a bit about Charlie recently, as I’ve found myself more often than not sitting in the waiting room of our veterinarian’s office with our 85-pound, 7-year-old boxer, Dozier. In June, we noticed that one of his toes was swollen. After an initial surgery for biopsy, we got the news that no pet owner wants to hear: cancer. His toe had to be removed completely.As I drove home late one summer afternoon last month, after we had gotten the call, I explained to the kids what Dozier had — they faintly know what cancer is — and that his toe had to be removed to get rid of the bad cells.My 6-year-old son was concerned at first, but his worry quickly melted away once I told him that Dozier could still run and play once his wound had healed, and that the surgery could cure him.My 9-year-old daughter, however, was in hysterical tears. I tried explaining that this was the only way we could help Dozier live a longer life, and that he might not even know his toe was gone, because dogs have so many of them. Her tears still streamed down her face as she thought about it.“Will his toe grow back?” she asked. I told her no, that only happens in amphibians. As I explained this, my sweet girl cried some more.“But I just want him to have all his toes!” she cried.It’s been a little more than a month since our sweet Dozier had his surgery. The good news is, he is now cancer-free. The bad news is that his foot has had a nasty infection. That means he had had to go to the vet almost every day for wound care, as his open, oozing wound had to drain. It meant taking a culture on his toe to determine what was causing the infection, and giving him multiple types of antibiotics. It meant that Dozier has to wear an oversized, plastic cone around his head — one that our 4-month old boxer puppy likes to bite and pull off of him at every chance.Through the experience, I’ve thought about Charlie; we’ve spent more on Dozier than we did our mortgage last month. But he’s healing. He’s getting better. And I can’t help but think that we’ll hopefully have a few more happy years with him ahead.And there’s a positive, too. Once a week now, I load him up into the front seat of my van for a checkup, with his oversized cone head, and his tail starts wagging. As we drive toward downtown, he starts to get excited. As we pull into the parking lot of his vet, he is bounding to get out of the car and go inside. He absolutely loves going to the vet. For a dog who’s had to go more times to the doctor this year than the rest of the family combined, I guess that’s one positive outcome we didn’t expect, but are grateful for. Our dog is happy, and so are we. That’s something I can’t put a price tag on.

— Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News, in Alabama. Reach her at lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com.

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